A few weeks ago I began harassing Nancy Friedman to write a post for me about naming.

She was kind enough to take some time out of her busy schedule to put something together for me. Thus, without further ado I present you with . . .

Seven Ways to Go Wrong with Naming

I’ve been naming products and companies since—well, let’s just say my first assignment was pre-Web. I’ve seen naming trends come and go, but some things never change. Like these common blunders, pitfalls, and wrong turns on the nomenclature trail:

1. Mistaking your mission statement for a creative brief. Yes, you claim you want to dominate your market. Sure, you’re cool and innovative. Guess what? Your competitors say the same things. We’ll need more and different information—way different—to develop your name, because your name needs to express something unique about your business. Can you see a body of water from your office window? (Adobe was named after Adobe Creek.) Does your product have buttons that look like seeds? (That’s how the BlackBerry got its name.) An experienced naming consultant will ask you questions that reveal what’s really distinctive and important.
2. Expecting an overnight sensation. Want a memorable, trademarkable name next week? Let’s do a reality check. Interviews, brand analysis, creative work, domain checking: they all take time. So does the back-and-forth with you and your team. And the trademark lawyers need time to weigh in, too. Figure on six to ten weeks from start to happy ending.
3. Delegating the assignment to an engineer. That is, unless you really, really want a name like “XQ326.” No doubt s/he’s brilliant, but most likely even your smartest engineer doesn’t shine at etymology, phonetics, cross-cultural semantics, and all the other factors that go into creating meaningful names.
4. Cutting corners. Allow me to put this as succinctly as possible: good naming ain’t cheap. If you’re hoping to scrimp on your naming project—if you think you can get a great name, fast, for $129.99—consider how many times, and in how many places, your name will appear. Think about how valuable that exposure is. Then think about how silly you’ll look if the name is unpronounceable or means something unspeakable in one of your target markets. Bonus tip: There’s a lot of room between $129.99 and those six-figure naming fees the big branding agencies charge.
5. Looking for love in all the wrong places. Aha! moments are as rare in naming as they are in romance. Instead of a love match, you should be going for an arranged marriage: a name with a good background and excellent prospects. Passion fades. Find an honest, suitable name and soon enough find yourself deeply in love. Trust me.
6. Focus-grouping to death. Getting to yes with your management team is a good thing. Sending the top 50 names to your entire address book isn’t. You’ll be awash in opinions, half of them snarky and the other half too subjective to be useful. Here’s something else good naming consultants are good at: helping you evaluate names and make decisions. Bonus tip: On the other hand, don’t leave anyone out of the decision process whose opinion really counts.
7. Picking a name “because it was available.” Of course you want to secure a presence on the Web. But believe it or not, domain registration is actually the easy part of naming. Here’s the important thing: a URL, no matter how weirdly spelled, is not a brand. A URL is not a story. All too often, a URL isn’t even a word.. Even if you have to buy a “taken” domain, you probably won’t have to spend a lot of money to do so. So here’s my advice: Instead of torturing the language to arrive at an “available” .com domain, concentrate on your brand story and on trademark issues. And let us—your hard-working, experienced, language-savvy naming consultants—worry about finding you a domain that fits.

That’s the bad news about corporate and product naming. The good news? With the right leadership, the creative process can be fun, stimulating, enlightening, and productive. And a whole lot less costly than a naming mistake.

Nancy Friedman names names at Wordworking and blogs about names (and other wordly matters) at Fritinancy.

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